James Dean has a reputation as one of the nice men of business education. It would be hard to confuse this quietly spoken and affable man with the image of a bike-riding rebel conjured up by his movie star namesake.

But although leather jackets may not be his style, Prof Dean has reached the top in his own profession. He was appointed dean of the Kenan-Flagler school at the University of North Carolina in August 2008, after 12 years working for the business school.

Hard slog of turning theory into practice

Four days hiking in one of North Carolina’s national forests is not everybody’s idea of a fun trip. However, for Charlie Mercer and 11 other students from the Kenan-Flagler school at the University of North Carolina, this was one of the most meaningful events in their two-year MBA programme.

The long hike was part of the seven-week leadership immersion programme, piloted by Kenan-Flagler this year.

“It was a unique idea for a class,” says Mr Mercer. “You put the theory into practice and get feedback from lots of different directions.”

Each of the 12 selected second-year MBA students had a dedicated professional coach and a faculty member working with them to give feedback. The other members of the team also had input.

“ You don’t usually get this kind of feedback when it doesn’t cost you anything,” says James Dean, dean at Kenan-Flagler.

“This was a most challenging experience. It is very intense and very personal.”

As well as the out-of-doors hiking experience, in which each of the team took turns in a leadership role, there were leadership simulations and two challenges based on The Apprentice, the BBC television programme.

One of the challenges was to raise money for the Make-A-Wish foundation, which makes dreams come true for children with life-threatening medical conditions. The students raised $33,000 in 48 hours.

To complete the challenges the MBAs had UNC undergraduate students working for them.

Prof Dean says that the time-consuming intensity of the programme means it +will always be for selected students, although numbers will increase next year.

For Mr Mercer, the module has paid off. He is looking forward to a career in consulting with Deloitte when he graduates from the Chapel Hill school this summer.

Prof Dean acknowledges that his plans for the school owe much to his predecessor, Steve Jones. Like him, Prof Dean, 53, believes the Chapel Hill business school has to be one of the top business schools in teaching leadership.

“We’ve seen some fairly massive failures in leadership,” he says of the economic situation. “If the financial crisis has taught us nothing else, it is that people in the financial industry need leadership.”

He acknowledges that leadership is a phrase bandied around in almost every business school. “I know this is what a lot of deans talk about,” he says. “But when you actually look at what’s being done, there is surprisingly little.”

With a dry sense of humour – only someone fond of irony would use the name deandean for an e-mail address – Prof Dean says a lot of his views on leadership come from working with corporate executives.

But as a former dean for executive education and for the MBA programme, he has also been closely involved in training some of America’s top military leaders – all the US admirals are trained at Kenan-Flagler. The school has also recently begun working with West Point, the US military academy.

Unlike most deans, though, Prof Dean is not dogmatic about leadership. “No one will answer the question ‘What is leadership?’ It’s like what is goodness or truth,” he says.

That did not stop him writing a white paper on leadership. “I’m an academic – but it is only a short white paper.” And, he points out, the two-page document centres on the kind of leaders the business school hopes to develop, rather that trying to define leadership.

Since taking over the top job, Prof Dean has charged his programme directors to develop leadership teaching, and the flagship elective is now the leadership immersion programme (see right). The school does not have the resources to make the programme compulsory for all 280 students, he says, but all Kenan-Flagler MBA students will get “360 degree feedback” as part of their personal development at the school.

The dean believes the leadership message is getting through to potential students. “Students are telling us that they are coming to us because of our focus on leadership.”

As Prof Dean acknowledges wryly, 2008 was a bad year to become a business school dean. “The timing could hardly have been worse,” he says. “One of the challenges this time is that no one knew where the bottom was. Everyone is in wait-and-see mode.”

Prof Dean himself is no exception. He is hoping that when the MBA students, now on company internships, return to business school in the autumn, many of them will already have job offers in the bag. “Historically firms made offers from internships and this will be a leading indicator,” he says.

As for MBA recruitment this year, this has been hard for all schools, he says. “New York has been really, really difficult.”

Academic route to the leadership role

When James Dean was appointed senior associate dean for academic affairs at UNC Kenan-Flagler in July 2007, it was clear that he was dean-presumptive at the business school and destined to take on the top job when the incumbent, Steve Jones, stepped down.

Before getting the senior academic role at the Chapel Hill business school, Prof Dean had been associate dean of executive development from 2002 to 2007.

In this role he had increased revenues for non-degree programmes by nearly 60 per cent.

Before that he had held the other key position for an aspiring dean – associate dean of the MBA programme, a position he held for four years from 1998.

A professor of organisational behaviour, Prof Dean earned both his masters and doctoral degree from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

As well as the problems inherent in getting jobs for MBAs, the US recession has created other issues for Prof Dean. “How do we run the school with fewer resources?” he asks. At its height in June 2008, Kenan-Flagler’s endowment was worth more than $158m; by March 2009 it had dropped to less than $117m.

Cost-cutting has been implemented across the board from the dean’s office downwards. “I am not going to lay someone off so that I can fly business class to China.”

But the crisis has also put under the spotlight what the business school teaches. There will be changes in the way finance is taught, says Prof Dean. “Risk management will be more important. Every course will be affected.”

There will also be additional courses in the relationship between government and business. “In America there is an unprecedented involvement of government in business,” he says. “We are seeing the kinds of things we have not seen in a generation.” Corporate governance and leadership will also be issues, he says.

Nonetheless, Prof Dean does not believe there will be any structural changes in the way business schools operate. “After 9/11 nobody travelled,” he points out. “A year later everyone was travelling.”